I’ve had limited computer access lately, so I haven’t addressed the blogisphere in awhile.  Here’s my current status:  I’m out in Vegas and can’t wait to come home.  I miss my wife, my apartment, and (of course) my Snuggie.  And the news that a big snowstorm is bearing down on the NYC area has had the unexpected effect of magnifying my homesickness considerably.  I love snowstorms and I’m really regretting the possibility of missing out my first Brooklyn blizzard.  Tomorrow night’s red eye home can’t come soon enough.

Anyway, here’s a tidy summary of the last two weeks.

I started out in Florida, where Janeen and I visited first with her father and then with my grandmother.  We passed the time by taking in the ocean vistas, having a couple of nice dinners and enjoying a bicoastal drive.  All these things were lovely, but the highlight of the Florida trip came when I got slowrolled by a drunk old man in a 2-4 limit game at the Fort Myers dog track.  Amazing!

In South Florida, retirees have nothing better to do than fuss over time, and they’ve turned wasting it into an art form.  So proceeding from that environment directly to the alternate universe of Las Vegas, where time’s very existence is purposely obscured, was a shock to the system.  I arrived late last Sunday, got some sleep, then played the Venetian Deep Stack Main Event.  I played well, made Day Two, got into the money, then promptly went broke.  Two days later, I played the first preliminary event at the Wynn Classic.  Again I played well, made Day Two, eked into the money and promptly went broke.  In each tournament I won a fraction of the buy in, netting a whopping total profit of around $500.

Most tourney players refer to these puny thankless first level payouts as mincashes, but my friend Gordon and I have coined a new term for them:  postcards.  These shitty little tournament cashes are functionally a push; they accomplish absolutely nothing.  They are nonetheless collected by Pokerpages.com and therefore create a new entry on a player’s Pokerpages profile (here’s mine).  These profiles are widely read and serve as the poker world’s official player tracking devices.  When a lousy mincash shows up on your profile, it’s nothing more than an announcement to family, friends and other followers of your whereabouts on a particular date.  Like a stamp on your passport.  Or better yet: a postcard home.  Having a great time, wish you were here!  Another mincash!  Wheeeeeeee!